Monday, February 20, 2017

Okay, okay...normally we don't promote specific sites or services and even our comments on software come with caveats. BUT, I have to let you all know about a FUN way to do some cross-promotions. Author Scavenger Hunts! As a marketing professional, I'm a pretty tough nut to crack with regards to messaging. However, this event caught my eye AND I've purchased TWO books (thus far) because of it...so, I felt it merited some analysis.

The folks at Night Owl Reviews (NOR) are currently having an author scavenger hunt. Now, before you think that you have to go running all over the inter-webs to find information, take a deep breath and relax. NOR's scavenger hunt has entrants go to the author pages on their site...and the author pages have NOR's starred reviews, back cover copy, and book BUY links to accommodate an impulse buy. They even have a handy videoto tell you how the whole thing works. The more author pages you visit, the more chances you have to win prizes. In addition, if you share the link to the scavenger hunt on social media, you get even more chances to win.

Here's why this marketing promotion works:

46 Authors are involved. Imagine that each of those authors has 100 friends, readers, or associates who are willing to check out the link to this scavenger hunt. That would be 4,600 potential readers who may stumble upon your book. (Well, 4500 if you subtract the 100 folks you bring to the party as one of the participating authors.) Plus, that's just author's promoting the event, NOR and NOR affiliates (like me*) are also drawing attention to the scavenger hunt. The sheer number of eyeballs (readers) who may find your books is worth the effort of signing up.

Readers HAVE to visit your author page. Sure, there will be some folks who race to the key word needed for an additional drawing entry. But your beautiful covers and amazing cover copy will give them pause and even entice a few to click the BUY button. (I did...TWICE...for authors and books that I didn't even know existed until I played along with the hunt.)

Participants promote the event. They get another entry if they re-Tweet the event Tweet...which means even more folks helping to spread the word to potential readers.

Cross-Promotions at its best:

The way this event is structured is an excellent means for cross-promotion. The beautiful thing about it is that it's NOT genre specific. Sure there are quite a few romances among the featured titles, but there are also some paranormal, fantasy, adventure, YA, and historical fiction mixed in there, too.

Now, of course, you could organize your writer friends and do something similar or you could work with a site like NOR to handle the infrastructure and logistics. And, who knows, you may just find some new readers along the way.

*Full disclosure: I write a column for NOR's e-magazine, so I am most definitely a NOR affiliate.